News

UC Berkeley police arrested one current and one former member of the Cal Bears football team on Monday in connection with the Sept. 30 break-in robbery of two students in their suite at the university’s Clark Kerr residential complex.
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The race for the Area 2 Peralta Community College District Trustee seat suddenly grew a little chippy last week with the charge that the brother of incumbent Marcie Hodge improperly tried to gain confidential employment information about challenger Marlon McWilson from one of McWilson’s former employers.
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A Jefferson Elementary School third-grade teacher has resigned following allegations that she might have violated the separation of church and state by teaching creationism to her third-grade class, district officials said Friday.
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Pink and green ceramic tiles—stacks of them—lay outside Berkeley High’s Community Theatre Thursday, waiting to be used to make a table honoring one of the school’s newest but most-loved teachers, who died from a heart attack in August while she was in the Phillipines on a Fulbright Scholarship.
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With the alacrity of a dying sloth, the San Francisco Chronicle waited until the University of California had evicted and arrested the remaining tree-sitters at California Memorial Stadium before asking what it should have at the top of the hour: Is the stadium safe, and can it ever be made safe enough to accommodate anyone, let alone 75,000 spectators?
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While the battle over the North Oakland portion of AC Transit’s proposed Bus Rapid Transit line has not reached the level or volume that it has in neighboring Berkeley, a Saturday morning political forum at Peralta Elementary School showed that the battle lines are drawn around similar issues.
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Two weeks ago, for the second time in a year, the Berkeley Police Department and city officials sent out a letter to 400 restaurants in Berkeley, warning them against holding late night parties, which have resulted in fights, gunfire and unruly crowds.
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If I could choose only one green leafy vegetable to eat for the rest of my life, it would be parsley. I almost put my money on the versatile cabbage, delicious raw or cooked, stuffed, grated and even fried, but for sheer flavor, and ease and speed of growth, parsley edged cabbage by a nose.
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Opinion

Editorials

We went to three Obama fundraising parties last week, and there’s another one scheduled for this week. As the polls look better and better, the atmosphere has changed from apprehension to a carefully modulated exhilaration. One of our hostesses, an elegant African-American classical singer whose husband is a professor, no hippie she, confessed that though she seldom has visions, she had experienced a clear mental image of Obama’s inauguration ball which she took as a sign that he was going to win. Her party, co-hosted in Oakland by an assortment of young couples, featured comedy-show videos starring Tina Fey and others projected on the wall. General hilarity prevailed, and $3,500 was added to Obama’s war chest, contributed by people who didn’t seem to be the idle affluent. And yet, our hostess confessed, she still wakes up in the middle of the night worrying about the election.
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Public Comment

There are a lot of good reasons to vote no on Measure LL, but perhaps the best one is that the campaign to pass it is based on lies. Measure LL would repeal our current, green Landmarks Preservation Ordinance (LPO) and put in its place a loophole-laden ordinance, designed to expedite the demolition of our historic homes and neighborhoods. The fact that proponents refer to it as a landmarks preservation ordinance may be the biggest lie of all. That’s because if a developer chooses the right options among the new and confusing bureaucratic procedures for landmarking, a historic building could be cleared for demolition before the public even knows what’s going on. In effect, Measure LL provides a means to keep historic structures from being preserved.
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Sen. Barack Obama recently made public a video (http://my.barackobama.com/keatingvideo) outlining Senator John McCain’s role in the Keating Five scandal. The release may be in response to the personal attacks on Obama by McCain and his running mate, Gov. Sarah Palin. Bringing up McCain’s role now isn’t just about the past because his role in that scandal has possible implications to the present financial crisis. The video shows McCain as someone who helped out a constituent, Charles Keating, while—just like today—taxpayers got stuck with the bill. Is his admitted poor judgment then an indication as to how he would handle the current financial crisis as president? You will have to decide that on Nov. 4.
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The two opposing mayoral candidates both have had the position of mayor, both with highly marred terms. First, let’s revisit the Shirley Dean administration which started off with Mrs. Dean not giving up her job with the largest employer in the town (UC Berkeley) while mayor. Can you say conflict of interest? One might say that Shirley Dean is the Dick Cheney of Berkeley. Even Dick Cheney quit Halliburton before taking the vice president’s job after awarding most of the post-war contracts to his former employer. It got worse when Mrs. Dean decided to go after our favorite city councilmember (at that time), Kriss Worthington. She decided to go to Mr. Worthington’s alma mater (in Ohio) posing as his aunt to pull information to get dirt on Mr. Worthington and had it sent to her summer home in Lake Tahoe. Mrs. Dean has also had her share of backroom deals with developers.
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For close to 30 years I have worked my way up the ranks from teen youth worker in a child care program in the Mission District to the position that I have held for over 20 years, as Executive Director. I have worked for BAHIA Inc., located in West Berkeley since 1980. This year I celebrate 28 years with the organization. My work most of my adult life has been in Berkeley, and I live within walking distance from my child care center.
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With so much discussion about transportation planning in Berkeley focused on details like street width, the number of on-street parking spaces, or the decision-making process, it’s easy to lose the sight of the big picture. Bus Rapid Transit (BRT) is a regional system that will serve the interconnected East Bay. Even though I live in Oakland, I am one of the many people outside of Berkeley’s borders affected by its transportation decisions. I ask Berkeleyans, when thinking about the transit questions posed on their November ballot, to consider their neighbors in Oakland and San Leandro who use regional buses.
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Berkeley residents who are interested in swimming and who care about public recreation for youth have something to cheer about. City of Berkeley staff, Berkeley Unified School District, PTA representatives, neighborhood pool representatives, Park and Recreation and Disability Commissioners, and representatives of the warm pool are sitting down together as a citywide Pools Task Force.
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Columns

Every major political campaign has at least one memorable moment—the point, either, where you later could say that the contest turned, or where some great insight was gained into what it was really all about.
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My column about chorus frogs a couple of weeks ago drew a couple of reader inquiries: Why are chorus frogs more resistant to the fungus that is devastating other amphibian species? And how are the chorusers able to stop calling at the same time?
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It’s amazing to me how differently two professionals can do their jobs. This applies to price, efficiency, safety and our comfort in working with the varied commercial connections we all make in our lives. It’s true with medical professionals, auto mechanics and tax accountants and it never ceases to stun me when I encounter either end of the scale. At the low end (and we know how bad things can get there, right?) there are those behind the counter at stores who have such small mandates and cannot seem to manage to provide us with even the most modest bits of service. My personal pet peeve is the clerk who can’t get off the phone with her boyfriend to sell me a roll of floss.
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Matt Cantor’s recent survey of local hardware resources, which I agree with entirely, got me thinking about how much I love hardware stores. I even have a copy of The Periodic Table of Hardware (and you can too, for a mere $11.95 at www.thisandthat.com/periodictable.htm—not only is it printed on an excellent pegboard background, but you’ll be supporting a local artist as well).
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Two unusual poetry events at Moe’s Books on Telegraph: Jack Marshall of El Cerrito, long an influential Bay Area writer and teacher, reads Mon. Oct. 20 at 7:30 p.m.; the following Monday the great Nathaniel Tarn, poet, translator and anthropologist, celebrates his 80th birthday, reading and in conversation with Moe’s Owen Hill, after a week of Bay Area events. see sfsu.edu-poetry or call the Poetry Center (415) 338-2227. Moe’s readings are free.
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Arts & Events

Not since the 1930s, facing a previous great depression and the impending danger of a fascist New World Order, and the ’60s with a previous illegal and immoral war, has there been such a great outpouring of political art.
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“All difficulties are but easy when they are known.” This line from Measure for Measure is like a key to The Bard’s comedies—and maybe comedy in general. Howard Hawks, who pioneered the screwball comedy on screen, said the difference between comedy and drama was one of perspective: in drama, obstacles are to be overcome; in comedy, they’re embarrassing roadblocks (or banana peels on the road), getting in the way of what’s desired, making the seeker look ridiculous.
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TheatreFIRST is celebrating their 15th anniversary with a fete for supporters, 7 p.m. Saturday at Chapel of the Chimes on Piedmont Avenue with a staged reading and Paul Bregman’s piano music, special guests including performers Dana Kelly, Wanda McCaddon, Sandra Schlechter and Simon Vance, with co-founder and Artistic Director Emeritus Clive Chafer and TheatreFIRST’s new artistic and producing team, Dylan Russell and Allison Studdiford.
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Jazz and soul singer Valerie Troutt and Linda Tillery and the Cultural Heritage Choir will headline “Prepare for a Future,” an intergenerational pre-election concert in downtown Berkeley, featuring more than a dozen other local performing artists, Friday Oct. 17, at Shattuck DownLow, 2284 Shattuck Ave. The concert comes three weeks before the election and three days before the deadline for voter registration in California, Mon., Oct. 20.
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Soldiers of Conscience, a new documentary airing at 9 p.m. today (Thursday) on PBS, begins with a surprising fact: Approximately 75 percent of World War II combat soldiers, when presented with the opportunity to fire on the enemy, did not pull the trigger. Turns out the inhibition that keeps a man from killing was stronger than all the training, conditioning and propaganda thrown at them in preparation for just such a moment.
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It’s amazing to me how differently two professionals can do their jobs. This applies to price, efficiency, safety and our comfort in working with the varied commercial connections we all make in our lives. It’s true with medical professionals, auto mechanics and tax accountants and it never ceases to stun me when I encounter either end of the scale. At the low end (and we know how bad things can get there, right?) there are those behind the counter at stores who have such small mandates and cannot seem to manage to provide us with even the most modest bits of service. My personal pet peeve is the clerk who can’t get off the phone with her boyfriend to sell me a roll of floss.
-more-

Matt Cantor’s recent survey of local hardware resources, which I agree with entirely, got me thinking about how much I love hardware stores. I even have a copy of The Periodic Table of Hardware (and you can too, for a mere $11.95 at www.thisandthat.com/periodictable.htm—not only is it printed on an excellent pegboard background, but you’ll be supporting a local artist as well).
-more-

Two unusual poetry events at Moe’s Books on Telegraph: Jack Marshall of El Cerrito, long an influential Bay Area writer and teacher, reads Mon. Oct. 20 at 7:30 p.m.; the following Monday the great Nathaniel Tarn, poet, translator and anthropologist, celebrates his 80th birthday, reading and in conversation with Moe’s Owen Hill, after a week of Bay Area events. see sfsu.edu-poetry or call the Poetry Center (415) 338-2227. Moe’s readings are free.
-more-